A well packaged horror that is more than it seems.

There’s a feeling of paranoia in the air. Something haunts people’s thoughts and fears. Religion is at the heart of everything.

The Witch is a well crafted telling of society as it was in the 1630s, or more accurately what society feared. And something feels different about this one.

Inspired by the accounts of people who lived during the time, we witness a highly religious family tortured by witchcraft and the unknown.

When the family is banished from their village and move to the outskirts of a forest, they are tormented by strange happenings which seem to centre around the oldest daughter, Thomasin.

With witchcraft, or at least the idea of it, suffocating their sanity and threatening their lives, the family begin to question whether their daughter has actually signed an unholy agreement with the Devil.

This film may be wrapped in a coating of supernatural flavours but it tests the very essence of human nature. It questions how far fear can strain and break our relationships, even ones bound by blood.

There isn’t much that people fear more than the unknown and although this represents New England more than 300 years ago, there is a surprising familiarity of what humanity fears today.

The supernational is just a representation of what humans have feared through the ages.

The Witch is an unnerving horror which is refreshing in it’s simplicity and it’s chilling effect.

I, for one, hope that we can overcome whatever fear we have in today’s society, otherwise the result – according to this film – might not have a happy ending.